


Brighter Visions

by imperialhuxness



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Armitage Hux Has Feelings, D/s if you squint, Emperor Hux, Gratuitous Depictions of the Force, M/M, Smuggler Kylo Ren, Weapons of Mass Destruction, with a side of fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-09-04 21:54:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16797784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imperialhuxness/pseuds/imperialhuxness
Summary: Then: Free-wheeling arms runner Kylo Ren sells illicit kyber to a disgraced general with nothing left to lose.Now: The Emperor doesn't cope well with lateness from his best clandestine operative.--"Kylo’s chest clenches, and he pulls Hux closer. The Force is glowing again at the margin of his consciousness, something warm and golden and alive threatening to burst out of it.Thirty years of life, and he’s been three different people: the failed padawan, the misfit criminal, and the Emperor’s one-man death squad. Only the lattermost has been happy."





	Brighter Visions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Camellia Cook (thekurosakiconundrum)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thekurosakiconundrum/gifts).



> Note on the title: It's shamelessly misappropriated from the third verse of classic carol 'Angels from the Realms of Glory.'
> 
> More important note: An extremely merry Christmas to [Camellia Cook](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thekurosakiconundrum/pseuds/Camellia%20Cook!)!

_ “It is enough of honor for one lifetime _

_ To have known you better than the rest have known, _

_ The shadows and the colors of your voice, _

_ Your will, immutable and still as stone.” _

-Sara Teasdale, “The Beloved”

* * *

_-now-_

Kylo is washing his hands as his ship enters Order airspace. The sonic took care of the perspiration and most of the battle grime, but his hands--soot-stained from fighting after he lost his gloves--require soap, water, and extra attention. The damp cloth he’s using has gone black around the edges, and darkened water slips from his skin into the sink’s basin in rivulets that cling to its white synthstone.

It was a longer fight in the Parmel system than either he or Hux had projected: the restlessness on one moon shouldn’t have rippled out onto two others, or touched the planet itself. For any other emperor, trouble like this would have required a thousand-man task force, a deadly air campaign, and years thereafter of cover-up public diplomacy. Hux, however, has Kylo Ren.

Kylo’s official title has the word  _ paramilitary  _ in it, which is Hux for  _ you are the one person in the galaxy to whom no rules apply. _ (For  _ out of trillions of beings, I chose  _ you.) It isn’t like Hux often--or ever--says this, but it also isn’t like he has to, when Kylo can sense it all the same. 

Over the past two years, Kylo’s grown used to that constant, casual contact with Hux’s emotions. It’s glaringly, world-breakingly different from the transient stream of minds and faces in his previous life, and more steadying than was meditation, in the life before that one. 

For that reason, these three months away from it--from Hux--have been a long, gradual ache--eroding a void he didn’t realize was empty until Hux filled it. It didn’t help that he’d abruptly had to cut off even secure comms once he realized the insurgency had spread off-moon. 

Hux definitely hasn’t cared. He gets the rationale behind this kind of thing, and is generally more cautious about operational security than Kylo. It’s called  _ covert  _ action for a reason. Still, Kylo’s missed him, as he hasn’t had to for a long time.

Once Kylo’s scrubbed his hands nearly raw, he lets the water run over them for a minute, cool and steady. The faucet sings faintly, and the water laps at the coal-dark stains in the basinDrops cling to the death-mask tattoo on his right wrist, one of three lingering mementos from the arms-running days. The second memento is the ship itself, and the third is in his pocket.

It doesn’t take long for the basin to reach passable cleanliness. After turning off the water, Kylo dries his hands and runs a comb through his hair, then slips off his jacket to remove the bacta strips covering the three-day-old blaster bolt graze on his left shoulder, his latest badge of carelessness. It’s healing okay--still puckered and pink, but neither painful nor infected--so he leaves it bare. Hux won’t let him hear the end of it if he drags himself in bandaged up like a wounded animal.

With a final hand through his hair, he tosses his jacket over his shoulder, heads out of the fresher, and settles into the cockpit. The white scarlines of hyperspace streak by outside, and Kylo watches them in a silence broken only by the thrum of the motivator. 

Flight--whether at or below lightspeed--always does an enchanting number on the Force. The Living Force, with all its polyphonic voices, all but disappears, while the Cosmic Force creeps in, hanging heavy in the blank spaces between the stars. It has a shrinking effect on a man braving the void in a fireproof metal tube; if not in a good way, at least a numbing way.

As Kylo lets it wash over him, his hand drifts to the pocket of his jacket, where it’s hanging on the back of the pilot’s chair. His fingers close around the cool metal of the object there: an antique Imperial encryption module, about half the size of his palm. He extracts the disk and turns it over absently, tracing the familiar contours of its surface, the dulled points of its edges. 

This is the only souvenir he has from one of his old jobs--the only job worth remembering (the job that saved him). In a way, it hasn’t ended.

- _then-_

After nearly seven years of freelance arms brokering, Kylo still hadn’t gotten used to the chaos of an underworld cantina. Something about the mass of living beings, with all their plans and emotions and threads of story, always set him on edge. Even though it was more or less his base of operations, Nar Shaddaa’s  _ Crater House _ felt no different, and tonight the hubbub had crept under his skin like a parasite.

He nodded wordlessly to the Zabrak bartender as they returned his credchip and slid him his tumbler of Ithorian Mist. He took an indulgent swallow of the whiskey before heading away from the bar and into the throng.

Heavy wreaths of tabac smoke and the grating notes of the live band’s ‘ _ Freema freema _ ’ cover hung in the air. Kylo clutched the glass to his chest on instinct as another sweaty body jostled past him, then willed his fingers to relax. He’d learned early in his career that Force-shattered drinking vessels did nothing for a weapons smuggler’s low profile. 

The swell of sensations was nearly overpowering, all the same, between the racket of the music and the buzz of conversation, the peak and trough of drunken emotions--and a tremor in the Force so strong there had to be another Force-sensitive in this cesspool of a bar. But it wasn’t his problem. 

He inhaled. Shoved past a staggering Abednedo. Exhaled. He had a (potential) customer to find. 

_ If the bar is directly in front of you,  _ their last message had read,  _ I’m in the far left corner.  _

At least they’d picked a relatively calm spot. The smoke began to part, and the clientele to be slightly less raucous, as he moved out of the affray near the bar. The disturbance, however, only grew stronger as he drew out of the chaos. It felt less like a tremor now than a dip, a chink in the flow of the Force, like a gravity well. Magnetic. Showstopping.

He found the indisputable source of it alone in the booth in the far left corner. He was a slim red-haired man wearing a gray jacket with an unnecessary amount of zippered pockets. He was like the central hub of the room, everyone and everything else in it linked to him by dark, quivering strings, and he was,  _ oh joy _ , very much Kylo’s problem.

Kylo prodded one in the Force as he stopped by the table-- _ to what extent was he actively projecting this? _ \--and got no reaction. So he was Force-null, he was somehow  _ like this _ , and he was looking at Kylo over the rim of a glass of clear liquid.

“Sloan Chet?” Kylo said, using the latest in the customer’s long string of HoloNet pseudonyms. He’d changed it in nearly every one of their chat sessions, which was nothing unusual. Everyone in this business was trying to cover their tracks. 

The man set his glass down, but kept both hands-- _ gloved _ hands--wrapped around it. “If you’re Kylo Ren,” he replied, excessively nonplussed. 

But he looked far from at ease, back stiff, gaze flickering between Kylo’s face and the door. The set of his shoulders--not to mention the close shave and tidily gelled hair--were military if Kylo had ever seen it. And then there were the gloves. The gloves didn’t make sense.

Kylo set his glass near the edge of the table and pushed up his sleeve, baring the skull-like tattoo on the underside of his wrist. He used the symbol as his avatar and logo, of sorts, in the dirty corners of the HoloNet where most of his clientele sniffed him out. It appeared to satisfy Chet, as he nodded to the booth seat opposite him.

Kylo snagged his glass and slid onto the cracked synthleather. He studied the man across from him, delicately chiseled cheekbones to inexplicably covered hands and wrists. The gloves. The gloves bothered him, as did the contents of the glass. If this was some kind of sting--

Well. If this was some kind of sting, then (1) of course they’d use one of the most objectively attractive men he’d ever seen to put him off his guard; and (2) he could handle it.

“Why aren’t you drinking?” Kylo cut straight to the point. He could sense no hint of intoxication in either the man’s demeanor or his aura.

The other man smiled thinly. “I prefer to be fully alert at my business appointments.”  _ Unlike a derelict like you, _ went unsaid, but less than half-imagined.

Kylo swirled his whiskey. The man couldn’t possibly be cold enough for gloves in here, and Kylo sensed no cybernetics to cover up. Maybe he thought he’d catch a disease if he exposed any extra skin in a dive like this. Maybe he was right.

“Well,” Kylo said, “I can’t do business with a man who orders water at a cantina.”

Chet’s brows pinched almost imperceptibly, and he scoffed. There was something nervous under the sneering demeanor, though. His eyes darted to the door again. “How do you know it’s water?”

Kylo smirked. “Does anybody order that much gin?” For a fraction of a second, the other man looked amused, then chastened, then his expression hardened to its previous mask. Kylo didn’t give him the chance to formulate a sardonic response. “You’re having a drink, or I’ll assume you’re a cop and walk.”

“I’m not law enforce--” Chet started, then seemed to correct himself: “--a cop. Let’s talk kyber.”

Kylo ignored him for the moment, turning to regard a flash of metal in his periphery. He stopped the serving droid in its tracks. “Give me another Ithorian.”

The droid tapped the order into the datapad imbedded in its tray, then extended its arm for payment.

Kylo proffered his credchip as he sensed Chet’s hand moving toward his own pocket.

“That’s unnecessary--” the man started.

“Relax,” Kylo said, as the droid returned his own chip and loped toward the bar. “I’ll tack it onto your final bill.”

Chet stiffened, and took another sip of his water. The fine muscles of his throat worked as he swallowed, then he set his glass back on the table with a decisive air. “Who’s to say there will be any bill? I’m just here to talk.”

“You wouldn’t have come here if you doubted you’d get anything out of it,” Kylo said. “You wouldn’t make yourself this uncomfortable for nothing.”

It didn’t show on his face, or on the icy surface of his Force-presence, but there was a ripple beneath it. “I’ll assure you I am quite comfortable.”

“You’re nervous,” Kylo insisted. Maybe this wasn’t the ideal way to start a sales pitch, but intimidation tactics had worked before. “You keep looking at the door.”

“In my business, the careless turn up dead.”

“We’re in the same business. You don’t see me on edge.”

“Yes,” Chet sneered, and there was something enticingly carnivorous in the curl of his lip. “You looked terribly relaxed on the way over here, clinging to that glass like it was going to leap out of your hand.”

Kylo said nothing. The thought of Chet watching him as he crossed the room--the thought that he’d caught the man’s eye--made him feel naked.

“After that performance,” Chet said, “I’m honestly unsure why I’m still sitting here.”

Yet he was.

- _now_ -

In the early evening, the palace is quiet, and the hallway skylights let in more shadow than illumination. Dark patches dapple the white marble of the floor, and Kylo’s footfalls echo heavy among the columns. Halfway to the throne room, he’s running a litany of excuses and invective through his mind.

As soon as he’d hit the palatial spaceport, his ship’s system and his personal comm automatically synced with the official system he’d disconnected them from when he went dark seven weeks back. Both were immediately saturated with a flood of comms from Hux, who had apparently given more of a shit about Kylo going off the grid than expected, and who had also apparently had some kind of micromanager meltdown when Kylo’s progress updates had dried up. It was stupid and irrational, and reflected a condescending distrust that pissed Kylo off like nothing else.

The first two messages that played had been sufficiently patronizing and profane, respectively, to put the inner workings of Kylo’s ship in danger of his lightsaber. He’d restrained himself only by disembarking immediately upon landing and heading straight for the throne room.

_ To think he’d missed this. _

He can’t stop composing arguments in his head:

_ You were the one who instructed me to cut off comms if it would jeopardize the mission. _

_ You have exactly _ one  _ experience with clandestine activity. I know what I’m doing. You don’t. I’m working for  _ you _ \--fire me if you think I can’t do the damn job  _ you  _ gave me. _

_ I’m not one of your soldiers,  _ Hux.  _ I thought that was the point of this. _

_ Do you honestly need a full activity report every fucking day? If you don’t trust me any more than that, just buy me a fucking leash. _

- _then_ -

_ Nervous  _ had been the wrong word, Kylo decided, after they’d been talking for an hour, had recapped the quantity and form of kyber he was looking for, and had settled on price and timeframe.

_ Tense  _ was the better term, tense like an unsprung trap. Beneath Chet’s cold presence there swirled a fury of unfathomable emotion: the quiet riptide of constant anxiety, the sting of fresh loss and wounded pride, and a great dark well of silent anger. He hid it so well, so cleanly, in both his mind and appearance. It was remarkable.

Kylo had met Force-nulls with a presence like this in his childhood, friends of his mother’s. It had given him a headache, so much concealed energy against his untrained mind. With this man, though, the magnetic pressure of another mind against his own was almost intoxicating.

“I need to ensure the highest levels of confidentiality, should we close this deal,” Chet said.

He was intoxicating, at least, until he opened his mouth and said something ignorant and condescending in equal measure.

“My contracts always include a non-disclosure clause,” Kylo shot back. “My clients tend to require it.”

Chet sipped his water. Yeah, his self-restraint apparently extended to his drinking habits: he’d taken one swig of the Ithorian Mist, pronounced it “ _ better than I expected _ ” (with an unexpectedly charming little  _ hmm _ sound), and set it aside.

“But may I inquire,” he said, carefully, “as to the  _ general  _ nature of these clients?”

“What do you mean?” Kylo said. “I just told you I’m under multiple NDAs.”

“I’m not asking for names,” Chet clarified, in a tone dripping with  _ keep up, idiot _ . “I’m asking about affiliations--First Order, cartels, Resistance?”

It was only the other man’s restraint that prevented Kylo from ordering the second round he deserved for putting up with this. But the prices they’d discussed over the HoloNet were good, even generous. And Chet, or whatever, was much easier on the eyes than the usual underworld fare.

“I do business with a couple planetary insurgencies,” Kylo said, and ran a hand through his hair. “If they use my product for Resistance weapons, that’s their business, as long as I get paid.”

“And what about the First Order?” The stillness of Chet’s Force-presence seemed to redouble, as if he was tamping down an emotion.

Kylo just answered the question. “The First Order has its own reserves, as far as I know. Think they’re still using up everything that came off their Starkiller Base.”

The redoubling shattered, like a meteor had struck the icy surface of his presence. A ripple swept across the shards that remained, and something tortured surged deep within the cistern of grief Kylo had sensed.

Oh.  _ Starkiller.  _ He must have lost someone.

“I’m sorry,” Kylo said without thinking, and meant it less for the loss than for having brought it up.

Chet’s presence had smoothed over again. Nothing showed in his face. “What the hell for?” he said, sharply.

Kylo shook his head, and let a silence fall between them. “So,” he drawled, once it seemed clear that the other man would pose no further questions, “do I pass muster?”

Chet said nothing, just held Kylo’s gaze for several long moments. He’d long ceased the furtive glances toward the door in favor of studying Kylo’s face, and he didn’t look away now, not even as he raised his water to his lips, then set it back down. He stayed quiet, clearly deliberating.

Kylo studied him, too. The Force spun around him, and Kylo could almost see dark tendrils of it wrapping between his fingers, clinging to the condensation on his glass. It moved grave and deep and heavy, as it did around someone about to kill, though Kylo felt no immediate threat.

The bones of his face were fine and sharp, and matched the way his mind felt against Kylo’s. His eyes were an arresting green-gray, at once intentional and ravenous. He was beautiful like an iceberg was beautiful. He was the kind of man you could break on.

“I _said--_ ” His impatient voice penetrated Kylo’s thoughts, but the smile at the corners of his mouth belay his tone. “--yes, I believe you’ll do.”

“Yeah.” Kylo blinked. “Good.”

- _now_ -

Kylo’s simmering by the time he reaches the throne room, high double doors still open despite the fact that it’s past 1900 hours local.

A quick survey of the room shows a few lingering officers and counselors at workstations in the corners of the room. Charming. An audience.

For decorum’s sake, he’ll let Hux start the argument. It won’t take much--the Force is like a detonator inside him, ready to ignite at the slightest sign, and Hux-- well.

He isn’t even sitting down, instead hovering on the dais in front of the throne, hands behind his back like a good cadet at parade rest, eyes following Kylo as he crosses the room. The only thing Kylo senses from him is  _ darkness _ , rolling off him in a gradual landslide that seeps closer to Kylo with every step. It’s powerful enough that he has no trouble taking a knee (as if he ever does, in front of Hux). It’s safer than trying to stay on his feet at the foot of the dais, with so much indistinct turmoil rushing at him in the Force.

He bows his head at first, but risks a glance up at the sound of Hux’s boots clicking down the three broad steps between the throne and himself. Fuck him, he’s as beautiful as ever, all delicate lines and certainty in his face, which is almost enough to quell Kylo’s rage on its own. What fully does it, though, are the faint shadows under his eyes, and the noticeably looser fit of his white uniform. It’s. Painful to see, even if it’s Hux’s own control-freak fault for working himself up enough that he skipped out on sleep and meals.

Kylo averts his eyes as Hux’s shadow falls over him. He studies the mud on the toe of his boot, contrasted with the nearly incandescent shine of Hux’s next to it. The weight of his gaze, and of his silence, bores into Kylo’s head for a long moment. Hux’s hands are still behind his back, which for some reason stings.

“I’d started to doubt that you were planning to return, Ren,” he says, voice low and taut. He isn’t directing this to the audience, but at least a few of the officials are within earshot. “Do you have any viable explanation for this?”

He’s close enough to catch Kylo in his darkness, and it suffocates the flare of Kylo’s anger. “Your Highness, I encountered unexpected resistance on Votai’s other moons. Since we know so little about their communications architecture, I opted--”

“Get the fuck up.” Hux’s voice is even softer now, heavy with unmistakable emotion. Kylo looks up at him, and his eyes are glittering, rimmed with what must be tears. “I said, get the  _ fuck _ up.”

Kylo stands, and Hux’s arms are around his neck almost before he can register it. Hux’s face presses into his hair while his fingers knead into the faded synthleather of his jacket. Kylo wraps his own arms around Hux’s waist. He closes his eyes, and breathes in the clean scent of Hux’s pomade.

The darkness recedes until Hux feels like the single point of light in the room, the blazing white center of the galaxy. Kylo could go limp from it, but instead he holds him tighter.

“Miss me?” Kylo murmurs, after a moment.

“Shut up,” Hux says, but there’s a laugh running under it. “Don’t think for one second you’re getting away with this.”

There’s an anticipatory edge to his tone that ignites something in Kylo’s gut. “Are you threatening me with punishment?”

Hux still sounds giddy, like he’s about to burst out laughing. “I suppose.”

- _then_ -

Inexplicably, Sloan Chet hadn’t left after they’d signed the contract and confirmed transfer of the down payment. He’d given Kylo an encryption module that would add an extra security layer to their comms, and then kept sitting. That funny smile had lingered around his lips, and he’d downed half his neglected Ithorian in a single gulp. Then he’d finished it, and ordered them both the second round Kylo had been fantasizing about.

He had a delicate, pleasant voice, Kylo had decided, when he wasn’t speaking to you like you were the densest being in the sector, so Kylo kept him talking just to listen to it.

He never disclosed his occupation, but Kylo was gathering that he had to be some sort of mercenary, given his intimate familiarity with a number of blaster models, as well as the climates, landmarks, and signature liquors of what were apparently half the Outer Rim worlds Kylo frequented.

At a lull in the conversation, he’d tapped Kylo’s wrist (glove still on), and said, “Let me see this again.”

“Sure,” Kylo had said--this wasn’t the sort of guy you said  _ no _ to. Chet had beaten him to turning over his wrist on the tabletop and rolling up his sleeve, then had traced the lines of the tattoo with an artful lightness. The synthleather had still been obscenely rough on the soft skin there.

“I like it,” Chet had pronounced, and let his fingers hover over the ink, barely brushing the skin, then traced down Kylo’s open palm. “A bit macabre for a weapons man. But it works on you.”

Kylo had swallowed. He’d wanted to flip his hand over and capture the other man’s, strip off the glove and press his lips to the fine bones and veins beneath. But the thought had a childish,  _ gotcha  _ tint that didn’t seem terribly sensual, so he’d smirked and let him withdraw.

“Appreciate the customer feedback.”

“The pleasure’s mine.” The man had smiled a little, and polished off his whiskey.

The cold surface of Chet’s emotions had remained at first unperturbed, but as the conversation had progressed, they had taken on a warm swell that Kylo would have read as desire on anyone else but the ice-man before him, talking to anyone else but himself.

But he still flagged down the droid again and ordered two more of the same. The droid left, and Kylo looked at him. Two faint spots of color had appeared high on his cheeks, obvious despite the dim lighting. Maybe it was just the alcohol--there was clearly something he was trying to drown--but the flush matched the warm swell. (And was lovely, besides.)

Kylo cleared his throat and pitched his voice low. “Are you really gonna make me keep calling you  _ Chet _ ?”

The other man actually hesitated. He looked down at his empty water glass, and Kylo caught the flicker of a single word, jutting out of his thoughts.  _ Armitage.  _ Kylo could only read the name because it was on the fore of his mind and the tip of his tongue. Just the one word, nothing else--all he was considering giving up.

But he glanced back up at Kylo with a sort of lurid smile.

“Yes, I am,” Armitage said. And traced his booted foot along the inside of Kylo’s calf.

- _now_ -

It isn’t long before Kylo is back on his knees, now in the privacy of Hux’s-- _ our _ chambers as Hux always calls them, inexplicably--the sprawling Emperor’s suite, with the late-spring dusk outside filtering in from behind thin curtains. 

Kylo’s back is to the window, and he’s bent halfway to prostrate, his lips brushing the immaculate toe of Hux’s immaculate boots. His right hand grips the back of Hux’s ankle, and the leather creaks as his fingers work into it. He lowers his mouth slowly, parts his lips till he tastes nothing but leather and polish, and the sudden dryness of his tongue. He kisses slowly, reverently, moves from the toe to the eyelets, and the Force thrums.

“Fuck, Ren.” Hux says it with a shudder of breath that ripples his whole presence. The warm swell in it burgeons, and Kylo fights down the blissful tinnitus it gives him. “You filthy thing. How do you always do this?” There’s the unmistakable sound of Hux unfastening his jodhpurs.

Kylo doesn’t dare look up at his erection, tries not to picture Hux’s elegant fingers wrapped around his hard cock, stroking. His tidy nails and the glisten of his precome will catch the fifty-percent lighting, and before long his eyes will be shut and his head canted back, and he might be murmuring Kylo’s name, and--

Kylo hardens despite himself, at the increasing shortness of Hux’s breathing and the thought that the sight of Kylo’s bare back and the feel of his lips on leather, could reduce t _ his man  _ to this.

He presses an open-mouthed kiss beside the laces, and raises his lips long enough to murmur, “You going to finish before you’ve even got your clothes off?” He doesn’t give Hux long enough to answer before running his mouth up the boot’s rough side seam, past the top to kiss the fabric-covered patch of skin between boot and knee.

“Your Highness,” he adds, withdrawing briefly to catch his breath before delivering a final peck. Hux’s shinbone is sharp under his lips.

“Ren, I--” Hux starts, voice pitching upward like it always does when he’s reaching his breaking point. “Move up. Start moving up, I can’t--” He inhales sharply, and Kylo senses his strokes becoming sloppier, feverish and desperate. 

The heat pooling around Kylo’s erection is growing unbearable. He can feel his pulse there. He straightens slightly, and one of Hux’s hands comes to rest in his hair. His stomach clenches, and his belt is far too tight.

He nuzzles against Hux’s knee and breathes, “Can I look at you?”

“Yes.”

- _then_ -

“That was.” Armitage gasped for a moment, still catching his breath. “Good.” He was stretched out naked on the bed beside Kylo, ghost-pale with the lights at fifty percent. They hadn’t made it through the third round of whiskey, but on the sex, they were three for three and spent.  _ Good  _ didn’t even begin to cover it.

Kylo wasn’t drunk, but he felt it. The room wheeled around him, too dark and too bright all at once. The Living Force inside him wasn’t sure what to do with this much pleasure, or with this much contact with another being.

He mumbled an  _ mmhmm _ at Armitage, and barely managed to stumble his way to the fresher to clean the come off of him before collapsing back onto the mattress in a dead sleep.

Of course it didn’t last.

The rasping shadow Kylo knew as Snoke pulled him out of the darkness. He brought him to Mustafar, because that had appealed to Ben’s ego in the two-month window between the Vader headlines and the fiery end of the Jedi academy. It just annoyed Kylo now. He had no interest in whatever unknown spiritual business Snoke wanted to manipulate him into.

_ “Leave me alone,” he said. _

_ The hot, dry wind smarted against his face. Ash hung heavy in the air, and he tried to keep his breathing shallow. It was night on the volcanic planet, the sky matching the blackened earth. The rills of lava running through it in the darkness looked like arteries without a body, sprawling through empty Space. _

_ “I will not, my apprentice.” Snoke’s whisper came to him on a strong gust of wind, surrounding him on every side, rattling his skull. “I cannot, when I sense satisfaction of yours derived from anything less than your destiny.” _

_ Kylo grit his teeth against the anger and the swirling ash. “You don’t know shit about my-- satisfaction.” The word felt wrong and horrible. Snoke could sense little about him but his feelings--this usually wasn’t one of them. _

_ “I know you have settled for a life that’s far beneath you. That every grain of happiness you scrape from it will never fill the void where a master belongs.” Snoke’s voice was a whirlwind. It felt like the ash had crept under Kylo’s skin; it made him want to peel it off. _

_ “I’m my own master,” he managed. He didn’t sound like he believed it. _

_ “And look where that’s gotten you, Ben Solo.” _

_ “That isn’t my name.” _

_ Snoke laughed, and the whirlwind picked up the black gravel around Kylo’s bare feet. It was smothering hot inside the maelstrom, and the rocks smacked his ankles, taking skin off with them. _

_ “And so you’ve taken the name I gave you. It doesn’t suit what you’ve become.” _

_ “You didn’t fucking give it to me.” Snoke hadn’t. Maybe the rechristening had been his idea, but the name itself was Kylo’s. He clung to it. _

_ Snoke heard the unspoken bit, and laughed again, shaking the ground until the lava churned. “You have no name.” _

- _now_ -

“ _ Ren. _ ” Hux’s voice is strained, breath hitching with each thrust. 

It didn’t take long for the rest of the clothes to come off, for kissing to evolve into a second round. Kylo’s tangled into Hux on the mattress, legs around his narrow waist, open.

Hux looks almost feral above him, carefully gelled hair mussed beyond hope, stuck in the sweat on his forehead. Kylo feels full to bursting, and not just where Hux is fucking him. His whole body is heavy and light at once, saturated with pulsing energy.

“Ren, you’re so tight, you feel incredible, you--”

Kylo arches into him almost involuntarily, like he’s being pulled into Hux’s orbit, like his body knows there’s somehow room for more of this--of  _ him _ \--of it all. Kylo manages to gasp his name with the motion.

“Ren, I--”

- _then_ -

Kylo awakened with a shudder, short of breath. He stared at the smoke-stained ceiling for several long moments, registering Armitage’s presence beside him in the bed. He’d stuck around, which was something Kylo tried not to dwell on. Since Crater House wasn’t in the right neighborhood for hourly rates, they’d had to rent the room for the whole night. Armitage was just getting his money’s worth.

He was curled on his side, his back to Kylo, unconsciously tugging the bedding around his slight frame. His breathing was soft and steady, and Kylo aligned his own with it, for lack of any other focusing point, and took in his surroundings.

The room stank of sex and decades’ worth of stale cigarras. White moonbeams slipped in through the split between the curtains, spilling onto the floor to accent the trail of shed clothing. It was just another shitty cantina suite. Just another job. (Snoke was just as far away.)

Sufficiently grounded, Kylo decided to get a drink of water, and slung his legs over the edge of the mattress. As he half-stumbled his way around the scattered clothes, his foot struck something cold and metallic. He glanced down, and the moonlight caught the edge of it: a lightweight chain, with two oblong rectangles dangling from it that could only be dog tags.

He’d vaguely registered Armitage slipping a necklace off with the rest of his clothes, but had thought little of it. Everyone but Kylo in this line of work seemed to carry around some sentimental trinket that felt too much like home to discard. (Everyone but Kylo, because Ben’s lightsaber didn’t count.)

Now, with the chance to examine it, he might as well glean what he could from Armitage’s. He knelt over the other man’s wrinkled undershirt and lifted the chain between careful fingers. He didn’t go back to sleep after what he read there.

The game was up the next morning, as soon as Hux’s feet were over the side of the bed.

“General Hux,” Kylo said, and met his eyes, probing.

To his credit, Hux furrowed his brow in a passable pantomime of confusion. “I’m sorry?”

Kylo was standing directly in front of him, dressed but for his jacket. Hux was perched on the edge of the bed in shirtsleeves and boxers, rubbing at his lithely muscled arms like he was cold. Kylo held up the dogtags and shook the chain enough for them to clink together.

“Those are stolen,” Hux said, too quickly.

If not for the Force, Kylo might have believed him. As it was, he raised his eyebrows and smirked. “So you attacked a First Order general, stole his identity, and wore his tags, but didn’t impersonate him?”

Hux bristled. “I-- might be only impersonating him part-time. I might need to keep his tags close. They’re valuable.”

Kylo rolled his eyes. The flare of anger at Hux’s not-quite-lie of omission had smouldered into something at once icy and peevish overnight. He didn’t have time to put up with this when he knew the truth.

“Starkiller,” he said, and knew it was cruel.

In the full light of morning, Hux couldn’t hide the shadow that crossed his face. His fingers worked into the sheets beneath him. He looked down, and was quiet for several long heartbeats. “So you looked me up,” he said, flatly, and stood, meeting Kylo’s gaze. “Didn’t realize they had stills of me on the open Net.”

Kylo hadn’t looked him up, but now that Hux said it he realized that would have been a logical next step, rather than waiting for him to wake up so he could read his emotions again. (It took too much effort while he was sleeping, and not broadcasting them.) But the First Order was shadowy--he doubted anything would have been there, anyway.

He told Hux none of this, and ignored every word the man had just said. He took a step toward him.

“What the  _ hell _ does a First Order general want with a ridiculous amount of illicit kyber?” As if Hux’s reactions to ‘ _ Starkiller’ _ hadn’t been a pretty decent indicator.

“That information wasn’t part of our contract,” Hux said, primly.

Maybe his bosses had refused to give him the credits to hollow out another planet after the first superweapon was obliterated, and-- Not that Armitage Hux struck Kylo as the kind of guy who liked to do things the old-fashioned way, but in a pinch, kyber could get him something similar to his former planet-killer.

“Fuck the contract! Tell me what you’re gonna use this for.”

“I refuse.” Hux had the same intractable glint in his eyes that he’d had last night. Then, it had gotten Kylo on his knees with a single word. But there was no warm swell to accompany it now.

Kylo ignored the fact that he wished there were. Hux’s eyes looked especially gray in this lighting, frigid and indomitable.

“I could turn you in for this even without all the information,” Kylo said.

Hux scoffed. “And implicate yourself?”

“I’m sure they could cut me a deal for that, on top of my reward.”

“Who could?” Hux shot back, just the slightest bit heated. “The Resistance? They’re idealists--they’d lock you up on sight. And even if they didn’t, they don’t have the credits to pay you more than I am.”

Kylo wasn’t sure that either of those things were true, but Hux clearly believed they were. Regardless, the Resistance was out of the question. Kylo would rather build a thousand new Death Stars than see Ben’s family again. “And what if I went straight to the First Order?” he said.

Hux actually barked out a laugh. “They’d take everything you had to offer, then execute you on the spot for having known it.”

Kylo swallowed, mind racing. “Then I’m canceling the contract.”

“Do you want a reputation for that, Ren?” It was more of a threat than Hux’s first two responses.

Kylo was known for swindling where he could, but not for failing to deliver. The man in front him had destroyed five planets. Kylo was sure he’d have no trouble with one smuggler’s career, no matter how strongly the Force was with him.

It occurred to him--like some ugly phantom of Snoke was still lingering in his brain--that he could just kill Hux now, take the down payment money, and (potentially) save millions of lives. But he also didn’t want a reputation for robbing and murdering clients.

Hux didn’t break eye contact, and the Force was as bright around him as it had been last night in the booth. He was absurdly gorgeous standing here in his underwear, with the ridge of his collarbone jutting under his tank top, with freckles scattered on his biceps, with his cut-glass cheekbones.

He had the same desperate, hungry edge to him now that he’d had shoving Kylo onto the mattress last night. It was still magnetic. A sudden urge to sink to his knees again overwhelmed Kylo--not to blow Hux this time, rather to... _ venerate  _ him.

The thought repulsed Kylo, for a moment.  _ I’m my own master. _

_ (And look where that’s gotten you.) _

This wasn’t just a job. It couldn’t be, with the Force like this. Rather, with Hux like this, and for that matter, with the best sex of his life in play.

“I don’t,” Kylo said, finally answering the question. “I’ll do it.”

Hux smiled.

- _now_ -

The Force is a swirl of light and color, a nebula expanding around Kylo, inside him, haloing Hux’s form above him with shimmering, invisible lines. 

Balance. All the masters always talk about balance. This has to be it: Hux, incandescent on top of Kylo in the dark they’ve made.

- _then_ -

A solid parsec along the Nexus Route, heading toward Wild Space, Kylo swung his feet onto the navigation console and pulled his datapad into his lap. The cargo hold was buzzing with the Force-presence of two tons of volatile raw kyber. He could feel it even from the cockpit, and the headache it induced was one of several reasons the crystals always merited a higher delivery fee.

He’d be rid of them in about eight standard hours, and Hux needed to be there to receive them. He extracted Hux’s encryption module from his jacket pocket and held it over the screen once he’d pulled up the messaging application.

Both flashed green, and he kept the message short, professional, and unpresumptuous.

_ First shipment collected, on my way to the coords you gave me  
_ Delivered: 0204 GST

_ Excellent  
_ Delivered: 0204 GST

Enthusiasm. That boded well. The follow-on message boded better.

_ Are you coming alone? _ _  
_ Delivered: 0206 GST

_ It’s not like i have a partner  
_ Delivered: 0206 GST

_ Oh, did they walk out when they caught you limping after last time?  
_ Delivered: 0207 GST

Alone on his ship with his feet up, Hux still managed to make Kylo blush, which was impressive against someone whose entire existence people regularly summed up as  _ shameless _ (shameless swindler, shameless cockslut, shameless runaway, shameless killer-of-six-children, shameless-abuse-of-your-powers-Ben). 

But something in Hux’s real implication unsettled, even offended him.

_ I wouldn’t have cheated just for you, if there was someone  
_ Delivered: 0210 GST

It suddenly seemed very important that Hux know that-- _ know what, that you’d be a loyal lover?-- _ but as soon as he sent it, it looked petty and oversensitive (which fine, maybe he was), but also like he couldn’t take a joke. Which Hux also needed to know he could.

_ I mean it was good,  _ he typed _ , but not THAT good…. ;)  
_ Delivered: 0211 GST

He instantly regretted that message too, from empty insult to vapid emote, but Hux replied before he could dig this hole any deeper with a third adjustment.

_ Firstly:  _ _ your cock begged to differ  
_ Delivered: 0211

_ Secondly:  _ _ I take that as a challenge  
_ Delivered: 0212

Relief swept through him, and he grinned down at the screen.

_ Can’t wait  
_ Delivered: 0212

An ellipsis bubbled on the screen for a solid minute, and Kylo waited for an elaborate sardonic response. All that came through, however, was:

_ Me neither  
_ Delivered: 0214

(The coordinates, as surprised absolutely no one, matched a near-complete spherical space station, whose design left little to surmise.)

(Kylo cursed, and still put a bottle of lube in his pocket, next to the encryption module. )

- _now_ -

Once the Force-brightness fades, Kylo drops his legs, panting, cock softening. With another exhale, Hux slips out of him and rolls over, breathing just as hard. Kylo lets his gaze follow him, the sharp lines of his profile a fixed point as the room gradually regains solid form. Wisps of sweat-darkened hair cling to Hux’s forehead, and his ribs heave. They protrude too much, so Kylo doesn’t focus on them.

Kylo watches him for a few more moments, drinking in the lift of the corners of his mouth. He radiates satisfaction, a Force-warmth Kylo can almost feel seeping across the mattress to himself. Hux stares at the ceiling and without looking away, gropes for Kylo’s hand. His fingers are warm, and Kylo can feel his pulse in them. He pulls Kylo’s hand toward him, and brushes his lips against the knuckles.

“You did miss me,” Kylo says, more smugly than he feels.

Hux snorts, and his smile spreads, even as he sets down Kylo’s hand. “Clearly,” he says, and then, as if some sort of spell has been broken, he swings his legs over the side of the bed, and is unflappable again. “Come clean up.”

- _then_ -

“I’m not going to use it against civilians, you know.” 

This didn’t come up until after Hux had fucked Kylo halfway to the Netherworld, which was of course terribly unfair. But Kylo was high on the sex and in no position to argue.

Everything about the room--Hux’s starkly decorated commander’s quarters--felt airy and translucent, shot through with light and buzzing with energy. He was afraid to look at Hux. He was worried he’d see right through his skin to the bones and organs beneath. He sufficed with the feel of him, solid and constant: Hux’s head resting on his pectoral, the unbearably soft strands of Hux’s hair tangled between his fingers.

“Decent of you,” he managed, languidly. “So who  _ is _ the lucky victim?”

“If I tell you, you’ll be party to treason.”

“I think by telling me it’s treason you’ve already given me an idea.” Kylo grinned at the ceiling, despite himself. “Might as well fill me in on the rest.”

- _now_ -

Less than an hour later, Hux is already asleep, curled under Kylo’s right arm. His head rests on Kylo’s right pec, and his hand covers Kylo’s heart. The Force has quieted now, finally, and the room is mostly dark and mostly silent. 

Bluish moonlight filters through the translucent curtains, and in the courtyard outside it, insects chirp. Kylo senses them where he hadn’t before, too caught up in the infinity of  _ Hux  _ to register the blips of short-lived arthropods.

There would have been a time when that would have disconcerted him, even sent him running. Anything that dulled his awareness to this extent was dangerous, then: if what was in front of you devoured your full attention, sucked in all your powers and attuned them to a single frequency, you were therefore unable to watch your back. The second life he’d found had demanded 360-degree vigilance.

Kylo rubs Hux’s upper arm, keeping his touch as light as possible. Hux’s skin is smooth and cool, corded with fine muscle. His hair is loose, all the pomade washed out in the shower. It smells faintly of citrus and is soft on Kylo’s bare chest. He breathes deep and slow

Maybe this was an inevitability. Find the one being whose very presence disarms you, and there’s no choice but to establish mutual trust, not if you want to survive the distraction.

Skywalker and Snoke would have thought of it differently. They would have told him to look further outside for satisfaction, probe deeper inside. Focus on the insects instead ( _ “They’re like a constellation, Ben--a hundred shining points in the Force”) _ ; focus on your own lust ( _ “Does it burn you, my apprentice? Direct it toward something worthy.”) _

It would have all been bullshit. Everything was, before Hux.

Hux’s breathing hitches briefly, and he flinches, tensing from head to foot without opening his eyes. Kylo stills his fingers and stares at the ceiling, willing him back to the sleep he needs. Maybe there’s some nudging of the Force in the thought, because Hux relaxes again, kneads his fingertips into Kylo’s chest in a single brief motion, even as his head nuzzles the other side.

Kylo’s chest clenches, and he pulls Hux closer. The Force is glowing again at the margin of his consciousness, something warm and golden and alive threatening to burst out of it. Thirty years of life, and he’s been three different people: the failed padawan, the misfit criminal, and the Emperor’s one-man death squad. Only the lattermost has been happy.

- _then_ -

“My superior isn’t undefeatable,” Hux finished, “but he is...formidable.”

Within two sentences of his explanation, he’d shifted upright on the mattress, and Kylo had followed, wincing a bit at the sting in his ass. Unwilling to lose the physical contact, he’d let his hand rest on Hux’s thigh. The skin was pale enough to make out a larger vein, and Kylo was pretty sure it was no effect of the Force.

“Sounds like it,” Kylo said, distantly. He let his finger snake down the faint blue line under Hux’s skin. He looked deceptively fragile, like something that belonged behind layers of motion sensors at a gallery:  _ admire, but do not touch _ . Yet here were Kylo’s gangly, callused fingers, splayed across the softest part of him like it was nothing.

“I’d feel completely confident about this project,” Hux was saying, “if it weren’t that he--my boss, you know--is very difficult to deceive. Or to distract.”

“Why?” Kylo looked back up at him, but didn’t move his hand.

“Because well, he is-- he has--” Words seemed to fail Hux, which was unusual and unsettling. “He-- he uses the Force.”

Kylo fought to keep his tone blank. “Oh?”

“You do know what I mean by that.” It was a question without the lilt of one.

Fuck it. It was time  _ Hux  _ knew. (It wouldn’t be showing off. It would be...leveling the playing field.)

Kylo lifted his hand from Hux’s thigh, stretched it toward the trim black outline of Hux’s blaster on the table across the room. The Force surged invisibly beneath the weapon, bore it up from the tabletop to hover in the air in front of the silvered paneling of the wall.

Kylo turned his wrist, rotating it horizontal, vertical, upside-down. Hux sat in silence. Kylo almost called the blaster to his hand, but decided that might look threatening, and set it back down after a few seconds. He lowered his hand and rested it in his lap.

Questions seethed below the surface of Hux’s mind. He was wondering how someone  _ like that _ , had wound up like  _ this.  _ If many people knew about it if he himself was in danger; how powerful Kylo was, and if this had all been a mistake.

All that came out, though, was, “You too?”

Kylo tried for a blase smile. “Runs in the family.”

Hux took Kylo’s wrist and ran his thumb over the tattoo. He recognized the design, or at least what it was meant to echo. “This isn’t just a skull.”

Kylo swallowed, ignored the tingling on his skin where Hux’s thumb had been. “My grandfather,” he said.

Hux didn’t fling his arm down in disgust. He didn’t peer down his nose and tell him he had a legacy to redeem. He didn’t tell him what a valuable asset he would make. He just turned Kylo’s hand over and covered it with his own. “I’d have never pinned you for it,” he said. He sounded pensive more than anything, like he was processing this, weaving it into his view of the universe. “You’re nothing like Snoke.”

The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. Kylo felt lightheaded, but not in the sex-high way. “Snoke?” he said, and tried to keep his voice from shaking. It was more like a two-shots-too-many nausea.

“Fuck.” Hux removed his hand from Kylo’s to run it compulsively through his hair. “My superior. I was trying to avoid his name.”

“No, it’s fine. I-” Kylo’s thoughts were swirling; the room was swirling. He inhaled. “I know who he is. I didn’t know you… worked for him. But I know him.”

Hux’s brows pinched together. “What? How?”

“It’s. Complicated. He’s been inside my head. For years.”

“Inside your head?”

“Yeah,” Kylo said, and explained about the nightmares of darkness and the visions of dying stars, and the promise of Something Greater. About nearly thirty years of the job offer he’d refused once and for all seven years ago, because it wasn’t a job offer, it was tying his own hands and laying across an altar to an unknown god.

About how he didn’t realize that until he’d burned down the closest thing he’d had to a home, impaled at least six people, and left at least six more to rot on a deserted moon. And how even after he’d somehow gotten the X-wing off the ground with his hands shaking, and flown anywhere but to Snoke, the creature still had never given up.

When he ran out of words, Hux sat in silence, with his thin, pink lips pursed in a tidy line that matched the rest of him. After a moment, he reached up and tucked a loose strand of hair behind Kylo’s ear, then traced the shell of it with his finger. He let his hand rest along Kylo’s jawline, lightly cupping his cheek.

“I can’t imagine what that’s like,” he whispered, but a dark flicker in the Force suggested otherwise. Hux left his hand up, but glanced down. “He treats us like rubbish, and we work for him. But you can’t...get away.”

Kylo shrugged, fighting for nonchalance as he nudged the ripple in Hux’s presence. He met an unscalable marble wall. “Not completely,” he said.

Hux looked up. “And he did--  _ does _ that from across the galaxy?”

“He does.”

“I don’t stand a chance, do I?”

Kylo wanted to shake his head. He wanted to tell Hux it was shocking that Snoke hadn’t stopped him already, and there was no guarantee he didn’t know. He wanted to take both of Hux’s hands in his and say  _ ‘run away with me,’  _ like he thought he was in a Holodrama.

But that would solve nothing. That wouldn’t satisfy Hux, not when he was such a conflagration in the Force. He’d settle for nothing less than consuming the whole galaxy, and Kylo wanted in on it.

Kylo cleared his throat. “You said you needed a distraction.”

“Yes,” Hux said, “but it’s imposs--”

“Let me be it.”

“What?” Hux dropped his hand and drew back, as if nothing could repel him more than something he didn’t understand.

Kylo leaned further in, compensating for Hux’s distance. He replaced his hand on Hux’s thigh, and didn’t look up. “I want him gone as much as you do.” Kylo watched his own thumb rub circles on the soft, pale skin. “So what if I...entertain him? In my next dream, make him think I’m considering joining him. If all his strength it is focused on winning me over, he won’t be paying much attention to what you’re doing, or why you’re changing the roster on his ship or moving essential supply lines off of it.” Kylo tilted his head to one side. “You might even win that way.”

Hux thinned his lips, but his eyes shone for a moment before his gaze flitted downward, showing off his lovely light eyelashes. Kylo wanted to feel them against his skin. Hux looked back up. “And that would work?”

“He’s obsessed with me,” Kylo said. For so long, this had been the one thing of which he was absolutely certain. “Of course it will.”

Hux’s forehead furrowed. The Force pulsed around him as he calculated. “But if he’s in your head, won’t he be able to see what you’re hiding from him?”

“There’s a lot I can keep from him,” Kylo said, and managed to keep off,  _ How else do you think he hasn’t gotten me yet? _

Hux was searching his face. “You’re certain about this?”

“You trust me?”

Hux smiled. “So far,” he said, and kissed Kylo till he didn’t know where he ended, and the buzzing, Force-strung room began.

- _now_ -

Kylo awakens the first time into total darkness, to a chime from Hux’s datapad that must be his alarm. The chrono across the room reads 0515, and Hux doesn’t stir. Some time in the past five hours he’s rolled off of Kylo’s chest and onto his own side of the bed, still curled into himself. 

The datapad dings again, slightly louder now. Kylo’s wavering on the edge of full consciousness, and it’s only a matter of time before it shatters even Hux’s stupor. It’s the last thing he needs. Kylo lifts his wrist and flicks it toward the device, silencing it mid-tone. Kylo’s eyelids sink shut again almost immediately.

When he awakens the second time, warm yellow light streams in through the curtains, throwing the bed into brightness and setting Hux’s hair on fire. He’s turned again since the alarm, so he’s now facing Kylo, eyes still closed, breathing steadily.

The chrono reads 1002, and Kylo has never known Hux to sleep this late. But it seems to be doing the job. The shadows under his eyes have started to fade, and the pinched carelines have smoothed over. The difference is striking--though he was still lovely last night--and must definitely mean he was more concerned about the mission than Kylo thought. ( _ Concerned about you _ , corrects an intuition that Kylo can’t quite believe.)

Still, the morning light casts him soft and fragile, and it’s all Kylo can do not to pull Hux to his chest and wrap around him like a planetary shield. But he lets him sleep, and watches until his eyelids flutter open.

“Morning,” Kylo says, once Hux’s gaze has focused.

“Fuck. What time is it?” Hux rolls over to check the chrono and swears again. “How the hell did we sleep through the alarms?” His voice tightens, and his anxiety spikes in the Force.

Kylo places a hand on his left shoulder, rubs gently. “Maybe we needed it?”

“I didn’t--” Hux tenses further.

“When you slept through the first one I silenced the whole thing,” Kylo says.

Hux whirls to face him again, shaking off Kylo’s hand. “You aren’t--  _ authorized _ to do that.”

Kylo bristles. “You fucking needed it, Hux.”

Hux starts, but no words come out. He studies his hand on the sheet and purses his lips before replying, “I suppose I did.” His posture relaxes, and his anxiety simmers back to normal levels.

“You look better,” Kylo teases. “Less dead.”

Hux thins his lips, but can’t keep the smile out of his eyes. “You didn’t mind the dead look last night.”

“Didn’t I?” Kylo returns, then props himself up to lean over and kiss Hux’s temple.

Hux huffs a laugh as Kylo withdraws. “Stop,” he says, but doesn’t seem to mean it.

Kylo suffices to press his lips against Hux’s, lingering for a while, before they get up for breakfast.

- _then_ -

Kylo had forgotten what it was like dealing with Snoke in the daylight, as part of his waking existence, rather than just dreams. It had been seven years since he’d given the creature enough of a foothold to access his mind at all hours. It had been undeniably draining back then--the lectures, the insults veiled as well-meaning advice, the permeating darkness of Snoke’s presence, woven inextricably into his own consciousness. But now, when on top of that horrible intimacy, he had to hide so much from Snoke, it was exhausting.

As the tendrils of Snoke’s mind receded from the latest vision, Kylo turned over in his bunk, and fumbled for Hux’s encryption module. He scanned it over his datapad to check for messages. Nothing there.

It was a good thing Hux had paid so well for the kyber, because Kylo was too tired to attempt to work. His nerves were frayed, and he could hardly pour a glass of whiskey without his hands shaking. He had been parked in Nar Shaddaa’s orbit for two weeks, with nothing to ground him but Hux’s messages.

Hux did send at least one every day, usually a progress update on the weapon or on other preparations for the attack. He was sometimes chatty. He’d sent a few pictures of the kyber installation.

Kylo sent him stupid shit he found on the HoloNet; sometimes--when he’d been able to get more whiskey down his throat than he spilled on the countertop--shots of his dick. Once, Hux had reciprocated.

The datapad buzzed. It was Hux, though he still had him in his contacts as Chet.

_ Turns out I need a third kyber shipment?  
_ Delivered: 1437 GST

_ I’ll transfer the credits shortly  
_ Delivered: 1437 GST

Kylo sighed. He doubted he could manage a third run to Wild Space and back. He blinked at the screen, and couldn’t think of a single coherent way to express that. Hux didn’t give him a chance to. The ellipsis bubbled for a long time.

_ Looking forward to seeing you _

Delivered: 1439 GST

_ got you covered  
_ Delivered: 1440 GST

- _now_ -

“This is new.” 

Kylo looks up from his omelet at Hux’s touch. He’s running cool fingers over the half-healed shoulder wound, leaning across the narrow breakfast table. He cleaned his own plate like he had somewhere to be, but has since been sitting with his elbows on the synth wood, popping dewberries into his mouth at a leisurely pace. The juice has stained his lips an obscene burgundy.

Kylo pauses, fork prongs-deep into airy yellow folds of egg. He forces a deadpan as Hux withdraws his hand. “Took you long enough to notice.”

“In my defense,” Hux says, “you had me rather distracted last night.” He’s still radiant with the Force, presence glowing like a solar flare. Kylo doesn’t so much see his smile as feel it humming in his marrow.

He snorts and returns to his omelette. “And am I supposed to be  _ sorry  _ about that?”

“Absolutely not.”

Kylo looks back up to read his face, and Hux grabs another berry from the bowl beside him. At the turn of his head, a loose lock of hair falls across his forehead, and Kylo resists the urge to reach across the table and brush it aside. To touch him, and never stop.

- _then_ -

Kylo relaxed as Hux ran a warm cloth over his abdomen, tracing the shallow contours of the muscles there. Hux’s release was sticky on his skin, cooling. It had spattered from Kylo’s navel to his pecs as Hux rode him, coming soon after flipping him over. 

Hux had wanted to be taken since Kylo arrived with the third kyber shipment. After delegating the unloading to his people, he had dragged Kylo to the commander’s suite and told him to strip. His hand had drifted below Kylo’s waist, and the single touch was enough to get him hard.

“ _ I’ll have you know, _ ” Hux had said, and tsked,  _ “all those stills have been  _ quite  _ effective. _ ”

Kylo had grinned and replied with something about how he hoped realtime images had been the next best thing to beat off to. Flying high on the adrenaline of desire, his Force-induced fatigue had dissipated, and fortunately Hux had decided to ride him just as the crash began. It made the reason he couldn’t last a bit less relevant.

Now, laid back and drifting in and out of touch with reality, Snoke’s darkness had returned as a burgeoning migraine, and he could barely keep his eyes open.

Hux’s touch was almost unbearably gentle, the one soft thing remaining as the ache settled back over him. Hux was quiet as he worked,  _ hmm _ ing softly every now and then. His fingers were light, and tickled faintly under the cloth. Once he’d deemed Kylo’s stomach satisfactory, he flipped the cloth over to the clean side and moved to his chest.

“You aren’t okay,” he said, finally, “are you?” He was running the cloth between Kylo’s pectorals, and his nipples hadn’t perked.

“I’m fine,” Kylo murmured. He would take Hux’s gentleness, but not his pity. The first was flattering, the latter degrading. “What do you mean?”

Hux ignored him. He rubbed circles below Kylo’s right pec. “Is it-- what you’re  _ doing? _ With Snoke, it. It looks like it’s-- taking a lot out of you.”

_ What the fuck else would it be?  _ Kylo didn’t have the energy to thunder back. Besides, there was something defusing in Hux’s clipped, uncertain tone. It wasn’t like him to speak in fragments. It could only mean he was out of his depth, which felt  _ wrong _ on a visceral level. Hux shouldn’t sound lost.

“It’s nothing,” Kylo said. “Don’t worry about it.”

Hux cleared his throat, and moved industriously to the left side of Kylo’s chest. “My entire project is hinging on this. I have to worry about--  _ it. _ ”

In the Force, Kylo heard  _ you,  _ and the tenderness of Hux’s hands said the same.

“Well, try not to,” Kylo’s voice sounded slurred and drowsy in his own ears. “I’m handling it.”

“I know,” Hux said. He lifted the cloth, but cupped his empty left hand under Kylo’s jaw. He bent further and pressed his lips to Kylo’s forehead. They were soft and warm, and left Kylo’s skin tingling.

- _now_ -

Hux looks up at Kylo and pinches the berry between his fingers for a moment, so tightly it looks ready to burst. He pops it into his mouth without breaking eye contact. Once he’s swallowed it, he starts, “Speaking of apologies, however--”

“Are we really doing this?” Kylo generally has no problem with confrontation, but this, he just doesn’t want to hear. He’d hoped that after licking Hux’s boots clean, his delayed return wouldn’t come back up. Looks like he was wrong.

“I’m just asking for an explanation,” Hux says.

“What is there to explain?” Kylo makes a point of looking back down at his plate, and neatly slices off another bite with the side of his fork. “I’d almost finished up on the first moon, but shit started going down on the others. I didn’t know anything about their signals collection systems, so I went dark. You told me that was fine.” He raises his fork and takes the bite.

“I  _ told you  _ to tell me first.”

Kylo shrugs, though the Force is beginning to swell around Hux, where it’s been still all morning. “I told you things were looking bad.”

“And then you didn’t answer my next transmission. What do you think was going through my mind?”

Judging by Hux’s thinness and the unmistakable dark churning of the Force under the surface of his mind, Kylo has a pretty good idea, but there’s no way to word it that doesn’t sound smug, dismissive, or sardonic. This can’t be only about the mission, but Hux definitely isn’t going to admit it.

“You still have an obligation to report on your intentions,” he’s saying. "You’re not a freelancer anymore, Ren.”

“I’m not?” Kylo asks, though he’s long ceased to be. The independent missions and minimal instructions he gets may indicate otherwise, but he hasn’t lived for himself since Sloan Chet showed up at Crater House.

“No! You’re--” Hux pauses, less fumbling for the next word than sifting through a massive lexicon for the precise one he needs. “-- _ mine _ , damn it.” He looks down at the table as he says it, like maybe it wasn’t the word he was looking for after all.

He can’t hide the spike in his presence, though, and the warmth of it settles between Kylo’s ribs. Nonetheless, Hux is being ridiculous, and this doesn’t solve the trust issue, which still nags at the back of Kylo’s mind.

“If you were so worried,” he says, heated, “you could have sent someone to check in on me.”

“I tried!” Hux spreads his hands. “I sent several probes to the moon you were supposed to be on. None of them brought back anything, because you didn’t tell me you wouldn’t fucking be there. A couple went to the other moons and the planet itself, but there was too much ground to cover for them to do any good.” He inhales, and the corner of his mouth twitches delicately downward. “Besides, you aren’t terribly traceable when you’re using the Force.”

“So you should’ve trusted me and waited it out!”

“I did wait it out. I waited for seven fucking weeks.”

The dark thing in Hux’s presence swirls, and Kylo peers into the abyss. It’s cold in here, like the last screaming nerve before a limb goes numb. Nearly two standard months of fear and loneliness and the usual anxiety dialed up several notches. It’s harsh against Kylo’s mind, and he can’t stay long.

“Then I’m sorry you didn’t handle it well.” It comes out too combative, so he reaches across the table and wraps his fingers around Hux’s wrist, thumb touching the pad of his ring finger. He feels bone without squeezing.

Hux stares at his hand in silence for a moment, then pops his lips and slips out of Kylo’s grasp. “I’m not going to respond to that.” He stands and rounds the table, passing behind Kylo’s chair.

Kylo follows him up and catches his arm, stopping him. “You know you can’t hide this from me.”

There’s heat in Hux’s gaze as he searches Kylo’s face, then he sighs. A dam bursts.

“What do you want me to tell you, that I couldn’t think about anything else when you were away, that I never can?” Hux isn’t shouting, but his tone is sharp, pitched undeniably upward. “That I didn’t sleep for three cycles after you stopped responding, waiting? That it’s a damn good thing I’ve got competent people, because every time I sat down to work I just wound up comming you over and over?”

“Hux--” Kylo starts, with no idea where he’s heading. Luckily, Hux cuts him off.

“Or did you want to know about how I figured you’d either died or left me, and how I’m so selfish I couldn’t decide which was worse? Is that it?”

Kylo is ill-equipped to handle this, the riptide of Hux’s emotions. This is everything some stupid, needy part of him once would have wanted to hear, but all he senses is Hux’s pain. This isn’t victory.

- _then_ -

It was Kylo’s third night parked on the surface of Nar Shaddaa when his comm chimed to let him know he’d fucked up. 

He'd come down for fuel and a couple mixed drinks on a sudden burst of mania, but between a hangover and an onslaught of contact from Snoke, he'd yet to drum up the energy to return to orbit. He'd vaguely sensed the approach of a series of parking officials trying to tow or ticket him, but had reached far enough into each of their minds to change them about bothering him.

A Holocall from Hux couldn’t be so easily diverted. He rolled over toward the sound of the alert, announcing the encrypted frequency. He ran his fingers through his hair before extracting both module and neglected comm from the bedding pooled on the floor, but before answering realized he didn’t have to turn on the cam. He inserted the encryption module and left the comm on the floor, then sank back onto the mattress, staring at the ceiling of his bunk. He reached back down to activate the transmission.

“Hey.”

A flash of blue crossed his periphery, and Kylo turned his head as Hux’s image materialized. He looked perfect and fake, and was wearing a black dressing gown. Some dissociative part of Kylo’s brain wondered if he’d just paid for Holo sex rather than answered a call from what was still technically a customer.

“Why don’t I see you?” Hux’s eyebrows pinched together, as if either Kylo or his own comm had personally wronged him.

Kylo wasn’t about to reward that kind of greeting with honesty. “Because I’m in the middle of something.”

Hux looked smug and amused for a second. “Did I catch you indecent?”

“A job,” Kylo clarified. “In the middle of a job.”

Hux raised his eyebrows, but to his credit, he held back a follow-up innuendo. His expression hardened, and he clasped his hands behind his back like he was on duty, but managed a casual tone. “So I assume this is the job that’s been keeping your message replies to monosyllables lately?” 

Kylo sat upright and worked his fingers into the stale sheets, bristling. “I haven’t--” he started, then stopped and tried again. “You know how fucking tired I’ve been.”

“So are you tired, or are you working another job?” Hux’s voice sharpened, but he sounded more curious than anything. He was still way out of line.

“That’s of no concern to you.”

“As long as you’re working for me, it is.”

_ Working for him _ . He said it so patronizingly, like this was a neglected materiel delivery, not a jointly-developed political scheme. 

“I’m doing exactly what we agreed to,” Kylo shot back. “Don’t talk to me like I’m not keeping up my end.”

“I’d be happy not to, if Snoke hadn’t gotten inquisitive about my new training facility this week,” Hux said, referring to the cover project he was supposed to be undertaking in Wild Space. “I believe your role is to prevent that.”

Kylo had always found holograms unsettling, the way they stripped the person on the other end of their presence in the Force, the aura of their emotions. It was like being struck temporarily blind, and having to fumble for guidance. Forced to rely on Hux’s tone and body language, Kylo could still tell he was anxious--even paranoid--but he couldn’t sense it himself. Unable to empathize, it just pissed him off.

“What the hell? Do you think I can--  _ control  _ him? I can’t keep him focused on me all the time. And that isn’t what I agreed to.”

“I’m not asking for  _ all the time _ ,” Hux said, and inhaled. “I’m asking for  _ more often. _ If at all possible.”

Kylo’s anger rattled the chrono on the wall.  _ More often _ . Hux had no idea.  _ More often _ would very likely kill him, and then where would Hux’s little revolution be?

“You don’t understand what it’s like! He’s picking me apart, piece by piece. You don’t know what I’m doing for you.”  _ And you apparently don’t care. _

An unreadable shadow crossed Hux’s face, then he stiffened. “Whatever it is, however unspeakable, it’ll be over soon. I’m sure you can tolerate anything for a few standard weeks.”

It was a challenge, and though Kylo could--as a general rule--smell manipulation a lightyear away, a part of him inclined to it. The other, bigger part refused to be had.

“I can,” he said. “I am! But it apparently isn’t enough for you.”

Hux's gaze flicked down for a moment, then back up. When he spoke, his voice was deceptively soft. “I suppose it isn’t yet.”

“What the fuck else do you want from me?” Kylo bit his lip to keep it from trembling as furious tears blurred Hux’s edges.

“I  _ want you  _ to get yourself together and do as you promised.” Hux didn’t give him the chance to respond. “I’ll be in contact later, Ren.”

The transmission cut off, and Hux’s image dissolved. The Force grabbed the comm off the floor and hurled it against the nearest panel.

Propelled by rage, Kylo left his bunk and headed for his ship’s small kitchen unit. (If he was trailing a bedsheet, at least there were no witnesses.) He brewed a full pot of caf and drank it over the next hour, anything to keep him from sleeping. Awake, he could and would fend off Snoke’s attempts at contact, but asleep, he was defenseless.

He wanted to ignore Snoke, like he used to, like he’d done without a problem over the past seven years until Hux came along and made him  _ hope _ . Kylo could keep on as he always had. He would. It was Hux who needed  _ him _ , not the other way around.

He put on a Holodrama for background noise, and made another pot of caf around 0100 local time. His datapad chimed as two of the shittiest Twi’lek actors he’d ever seen leaned in for a kiss.

The notification banner read  _ Sloan Chet _ , and he nearly turned the device upside-down to ignore it. He couldn’t.

_ I know I don’t understand what it’s like.  
_ Delivered: 0501 GST

_ You’re remarkable for having fought it like you have  
_ Delivered: 0501

_ I will understand if you don’t want do this.  
_ Delivered: 0502 GST

_ You certainly don’t have to.  
_ Delivered: 0503 GST

_ Your wellbeing is more important  
_ Delivered: 0503

_ You are, I mean.  
_ Delivered: 0504

  
  


Kylo waited for another message, more curious than actually expectant. It didn’t come. Then he turned over the datapad. 

He fell asleep around dawn, and Snoke was merciless. It was Mustafar again, and an airing of all the rage and hurt that Snoke hopefully didn’t know were directed toward Hux. Snoke called it fine raw materials in need of sharpening, and Kylo cursed at him, shattering. He woke up shaking, near tears, to the last message.

_ I’m sorry  
_ Delivered: 0510

- _now_ -

Kylo gathers Hux into his arm and holds him for a moment. There’s so little of him, under the thin robe he’s wearing. “I wouldn’t leave you,” he offers, inadequately. 

Hux relaxes, presses his cheek against Kylo’s. ”I feel terribly reassured,” he says, with audible sarcasm.

“I’m not backing out now.” Kylo laughs low and rubs circles at the small of Hux’s back, feeling vertebrae under the silky fabric. “I’ve been through too much shit to get here.”

Hux’s hidden smile sets the Force thrumming, and Kylo’s hand doesn’t stop. “Thank you,” he says, softly, after a second or an infinity. “For all the shit. I know I don’t often say that.”

“You really don’t,” Kylo says into his hair.

“That’s because you’re insufferable.”

“I know.”

Hux pulls away just enough to meet Kylo’s eyes before he crushes his lips against Kylo’s in an almost fevered kiss. It doesn’t take Kylo long to shut his eyes. He quiets the Force, and focuses on nothing but the feel of Hux’s mouth on his, demanding and possessive. He tastes sticky and sweet with the berry juice, and his tongue searches the space between Kylo’s lips. His right hand tangles into Kylo’s hair, tugging and massaging at euphoric intervals.

Kylo cups Hux’s neck, and can feel Hux’s pulse spike. The Force sings.

Hux draws back for air, but his lips still linger over Kylo’s, nearly brushing them. “Thank you,” he says again. Any response Kylo could have made evaporates as Hux drops his head to kiss his neck.

The first press of Hux’s lips feels deep enough to bruise, and Kylo inhales sharply, hardening despite himself. Hux is irresistible like this, raw and--in his way--needy. The Force in him latches onto Kylo, enveloping him. His mouth moves languidly down Kylo’s neck, across his collarbone, to his shoulder. He briefly dips his head to kiss the near edge of the scarcely-healed wound, high on Kylo’s bicep, then looks back up, tipping his chin for how close they are.

“How do you want me?” Kylo manages. Hux’s desire is palpable in the Force, and in the heat where his hips have slotted into his own.

“How do I want--” Hux drops his head again briefly, the corners of his mouth tweaking upward.

His hands stray to Kylo’s waistband, and it feels different, as Hux takes him out in the daylight. More real somehow, with nothing to conceal his possessive expression as he wraps his slim, perfect fingers around Kylo’s cock.

He rubs him to full hardness, and Kylo fights to keep his eyes open as Hux moves faster and the sunlight becomes unbearable. He focuses on Hux’s lips, and the lilt of his voice, murmuring nonsense punctuated occasionally by the word  _ beautiful _ .

Kylo’s vision starts to tunnel, and he looks down. Hux’s robe has tented, and fuck, he’s bright in the Force, barely in control. He’s going to come, completely untouched, somehow satisfied by Kylo’s pleasure alone.

That’s it. Kylo’s over the edge. He spills into Hux’s hand, shameless. Hux shudders, then exhales with his own release.

- _then_ -

“You continue to disappoint me.” Snoke sounded heartsick about it, which was a feat some detached part of Kylo admired. The rest of him was too exhausted, half-smothered by the dark tendrils of Snoke’s presence. He didn’t know if he was awake or not. 

“How long will you avoid this, my apprentice? You’ve asked enough questions. You’ve shared enough of yourself with me already.”

“‘ _Shared_ ,’” Kylo spat. “That isn’t how I remember it.”

So far he’d managed to keep Snoke talking for an hour. It was grueling, but Hux had texted him a single word a few hours back:  _ today _ . And it was nice manipulating Snoke for a change.

“As I remember it,” Snoke said, “you’ve often welcomed me. There is no one else who--”

Snoke’s voice stopped, like a transmission disconnected prematurely. His disfigured image evaporated from Kylo’s mind, and his presence rescinded last, more completely than Kylo had ever felt him go.

Kylo dared to hope, and experimentally reached out after him. Nothing. Call failed.  _ Line disconnected. _

Hux had done it.

It was night on Nar Shaddaa, but the inside of the ship felt bright. Kylo’s head reeled for all he was lying down. The ceiling tilted above him, and he felt like he was falling.

He shut his eyes against the nausea, and slept for the better part of the next day, and the next. He left his bunk for ration bars, water, and the fresher. He listened to music and relished the solitude of his mind. He checked the DarkNet boards where he used to lurk in search of clients, but there was next to no activity.

He checked the news long enough to discover why.

After the Supremacy’s destruction it had taken Hux little time to seize control of the Order and elicit the last few planetary surrenders necessary for galactic sovereignty. His name dominated every headline, but he’d ensured no images of himself were leaked. Apparently he was saving a public appearance for his coronation.

Hux was busy, obviously. He’d paid Kylo for the kyber, and freed him from Snoke to compensate for his other services. Their arrangement had ended. Naturally, Kylo didn’t hear from him. He was stupid and sentimental for imagining he would.

On the third morning, Kylo made up his mind to tidy the ship and not care. He tried leaving his datapad and Hux’s encryption module in another room, but couldn’t. He felt relieved, but not quite happy, and his senses seemed to be working as if through a static barrier, blurry and sluggish. There was a quiet in the Force where Snoke used to be, a blank space that felt like it was starting to scab over. It created the impression of white noise, though there was nothing there.

In the evening Kylo went to Crater House, as much to fill the silence as hoping to drum up some business. Which he needed now. He seated himself at the center of the bar, a prime spot for Force-enhanced eavesdropping on potential customers. It was a crude way to go about it, but it took a tremendous amount of focus, and left little room for distracting thoughts.

“Ithorian Mist,” he told the bartender, and fumbled for his credchip once the Zabrak had gone to pour it.

Above the bar, a Holoscreen ran the news, which showed footage of the  _ Supremacy’ _ s fiery wreckage, spliced with pundits speculating on the new Emperor’s first actions.

The same questions dominated the thoughts and conversations of the cantina clientele.

_ “Think he’ll crack down on spice-running?” _

“Shit, I hope nobody tells him about the cache on Endor.”

_ “I heard he’s anti-slavery.” _

“Probably depends on who the slaves are.”

_ “Wonder how long this dive’ll stay in business.” _

Swirls of conversation washed over Kylo in incoherent snippets whose only common denominator seemed to be Hux. The band grated, and drunken emotions peaked and troughed.

Kylo tipped back his whiskey and ignored the pull in the Force that must have been evoked by the repetition of Hux's name alone. He swallowed down the rest of the glass, and didn't register the hooded figure that took the seat beside him until it spoke.

"Two Ithorians. His next one's on me." The clipped accent and the nod in Kylo's direction pulled him back to himself, and Hux's presence rushed over him. The hood was a feeble disguise, but Hux apparently had his policy on still images on his side. He was very nearly smiling.

Kylo's mouth felt dry, but he managed to speak. "Congratulations, Emperor."

Hux flicked his wrist as if to bat away the compliment, a gesture both uncharacteristic and charming. The bartender slid two glasses of turquoise liquor across the bar. Hux slid the Zabrak his credchip without breaking eye contact with Kylo.

"I came to ask," he said, and took a swallow, "if you've lined up your next job."

Kylo shook his head. "I won't sell to insurgents any more, if that's what you're--"

Hux ignored him. "The Empire happens to have a vacancy."

- _now_ -

“I’m having this laundered.”

Hux holds up Kylo’s jacket, a respectable distance from his own impeccable uniform. He’s fully dressed and tidying the room while Kylo pretends he’s recovering from the orgasm, sprawled across the bed, watching him.

“Wait,” Kylo says, and shifts upright, inching toward the edge of the mattress. He holds out a hand for it. “Here-- I’ve gotta clean out the pockets.”

“Very well.” Hux steps over and hands it to him, looking glad to be rid of the stained, tattered thing. Kylo sees past the theatrics--he didn’t seem to mind it contaminating him last night. He waits expectantly as Kylo rummages through the pockets.

Soon he’s strewn his credchip, a crumpled ration bar wrapper, a flimsi parking ticket, and a lone bottle cap across the sheets. He pauses as his hand strikes the final item--the encryption module--and he palms it as best he can, forcing the jacket back on Hux to distract him from it. Kylo isn’t interested in hearing Hux’s commentary on the dead module. He won’t understand--Hux has no use for impractical things.

Hux takes the jacket, but his eyes don’t leave Kylo’s hand.  _ Damn it.  _ Suddenly careless, Hux folds the jacket over his left arm and snags Kylo’s wrist.

“You’ve still got this thing?” There’s something inexplicably soft in his inflection. It isn’t incredulity, it’s--  _ delight _ , simple and childlike and  _ rare _ .

But Kylo doesn’t fully buy it. “And?” he says, nearly a challenge.

Hux sighs, and the exasperation is for once mostly affected. “ _ And _ ,” he echoes, then tosses the jacket onto the bed. Another anomaly, but it isn’t like the sheets are clean. He fumbles in the pockets of his tunic for a moment, then extracts his hand. “Me too.”

Hux’s matching module rests in his palm, glinting faintly in the natural light.

Kylo looks down, but can’t hide his smile. He doesn’t really try to. Hux feels golden, no ice in him now.

“Is that what you’ve been trying to comm me with?” Kylo nearly manages wryness. “They’re deactivated.”

Hux smiles, and rubs his thumb over the module’s contours. “Well, perhaps they shouldn’t be.”

“So you can bother me anywhere I’m trying to work?”

“Yes.” Hux bends at the waist to kiss him, resting his empty left hand on Kylo’s shoulder. The kiss is slow and languid, but mostly chaste. Hux withdraws before Kylo can start loosening any of his clothing. “Exactly,” he says, then pecks one more time and pulls back completely. “I’ll take care of it today. We need to be functional before your next mission.”

Kylo gnaws his lip for a moment before responding, damming back a wave of disappointment. “I’m leaving that soon?” He likes the work, of course, but this time he’s just. Been hoping for long here, with Hux.

“Of course not.” Hux’s smile comes as close as Hux can to mischievous. “I think we’ve found a use for you here for a while.”

Hux looks Kylo’s form up and down, a bit smug, a bit possessive, for once flagrantly appreciative, like Kylo’s a hard-won realm he’s conquered. Some indispensable piece of his empire.

“I’m all yours.” Kylo shrugs, then lets himself smile again.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hey on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/imperialhuxness)


End file.
